Re: docbook css questions

To: developer at arabeyes dot org

Subject: Re: docbook css questions

From: Alaa The Great <alaa at annosoor dot org>

Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 01:39:03 +0300

Organization: Annosoor Assaghera

On Mon, 2 Sep 2002 15:21:39 -0500
Mohammed Elzubeir wrote:
> I don't think HTML has anything to do with bidi (and when we refer
> to bidi here, we refer to the unicode bidi algorithm uax#9).
> The only thing html has that is related and I'm aware of is
> "dir=rtl".
yes this is what I meant exactly I know nothing about HTML or CSS so
can I put these dir=rtl tags (or are they properties) in the CSS
file??
>
> >
> > I really know nothing about all this stuff, I'm just trying to
> > come up with a working solution, hopefully I won't have to learn
> > SGML, XML, DSSSL, HTML CSS and all these lovely letters just to be
> > able to produce a single sourced Arabic document.
> >
>
> To tell you the truth, I have tried to do that in the past (skipping
> the LyX part).. and ended up running circles around myself with
> no luck whatsoever... so I put that on indefinite hold. The idea
> was to get something setup to standardize Arabic documentation
> for the project.ic to
I don't know what is the problem, I already have a working system
expect for the RTL part.
there where few minor problems with the SGML produced by LyX but I
fixed part of them and sent a patch.
using DocBook directly is not very hard and you don't have to learn
the whole thing you could just learn a subset.
whether you use LyX or write you xml or sgml directly the HTML output
is perfect except for the lack of encoding and rtl tags, encoding is
easy to add or you could use katoob and turn the Arabic characters to
html numerical references and bypass the encoding part completely.
now if rtl tags could be added to the css then no further work is
needed if not you'll need to add them yourself, probably this could be
automated somehow (where should these tags go anyway??)
so if someone would help me with the CSS and RTL part I promise to
have a working solution by the week end with an example and a document
explaining it all.
we also need a localization to the sssl stylesheets so when you
produce a documents it says fouk for up regou3 for back and fehres
for table of contents etc.
as far as I can tell this is a very simple thing.
the tricky question would be producing PDFs and TeX output, all my
trails failed so far, we'll see about that when we get html to work.
so could someone answer my question??
what are the tags I need to know about to make proper arabic
documents, and could these tags go in a cascading style sheet or do I
have to put them inside the html file itself??
cheers,
Alaa
--
Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we
ourselves
possess.
-- Gandalf the Grey [J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the
Rings"]